Elliptic cohomology is an extremely beautiful theory with both geometric and arithmetic aspects. The former is explained by the fact that the theory is a quotient of oriented cobordism localised away from 2, the latter by the fact that the coefficients coincide with a ring of modular forms. The aim of the book is to construct this cohomology theory, and evaluate it on classifying spaces BG of finite groups G. This class of spaces is important, since (using ideas borrowed from... More Description

Elliptic cohomology is an extremely beautiful theory with both geometric and arithmetic aspects. The former is explained by the fact that the theory is a quotient of oriented cobordism localised away from 2, the latter by the fact that the coefficients coincide with a ring of modular forms. The aim of the book is to construct this cohomology theory, and evaluate it on classifying spaces BG of finite groups G. This class of spaces is important, since (using ideas borrowed from `Monstrous Moonshine') it is possible to give a bundle-theoretic definition of EU-(BG). Concluding chapters also discuss variants, generalisations and potential applications.